


Meanwhile in Denmark

by alexcat



Category: Penguins of Madagascar
Genre: Birthday, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5637253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The backstory of what happened in Denmark...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meanwhile in Denmark

**Author's Note:**

> This story is for Jenny, the sweetest penguin of all.

It all had started when the zookeeper held a press conference, announcing that the Copenhagen Zoo was expecting some female penguins from the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. There were several females of different types of penguins but the one who set Skipper’s heart to pounding was Imelda. She was tall and beautiful and he nearly fainted when he saw her photo on the posters that hung everywhere in the zoo. 

As he was staring at one such poster, he heard that accent behind him. “She is pretty, is she not? Not so pretty as a puffin but pretty enough.” 

He turned and there stood Hans, the puffin who seemed to think the zoo was his personal playground. He never stayed in his own habitat and made everyone’s business his own. He courted all the female birds – both regular birds and aquatic ones like penguins.

“She is a beauty, Hans, but why do you care? You’re not a penguin.” 

“Ah, but her colors and mine would look together, yah? When we stroll about for the silly people to admire? Yah?”

Skipper harrumphed and went back to staring. There was no way a penguin would go for a plain old bird, was there? He’d show that stupid bird! 

“I will sweep her off her feet!” 

“Hans, old buddy, she’s a penguin! What would she want with a bird like you?”

Hans held out a shiny object. It looked like those things the keepers used to unlock the lion’s cage… what were they called? Keys! That was it. “I have a treasure for her! When she sees this, she will be mine!” 

“We’ll just see about that.” 

Skipper began his quest to find a gift for Imelda that would blind her to the puffin and his shiny key. He could think of nothing else but a gift for Imelda. He forgot to eat and began sneaking all over the zoo, exploring places that he wasn’t supposed to be in. Everywhere he went, Hans was there to greet him and dangle his key in front of him. 

“A beautiful gift for a beautiful lady. No?”

After finding nothing of consequence at the zoo, he began to escape the zoo at night wand wander around Copenhagen. He saw stores full of shiny things but when he tried to get inside, bells rang and lights flashed so he faded into the shadows as he did so well. 

One night, on one of his forays, he went to the harbor and saw it in the moonlight! A statue of a human with a fish tail. How wonderful! She was almost as beautiful as Imelda and she’d look wonderful in the penguin habitat. All he had to do was get her back to the zoo. 

The zoo had just gotten in some manatees, huge agreeable creatures that ought to be strong enough to move the statue to the zoo. He offered them some grasses he planned to steal from the coastal animals’ habitat. The manatees did agree and late on the night before Imelda was supposed to come, they all sneaked out to the harbor. 

Moving the Mermaid was harder than they’d thought. Not having hands made moving her rather awkward and her head was a little wobbly from the last protestors who’d decided to chop it off so when they did manage to finally move her, her head fell into the harbor. That was where hands might have come in rather handy. Neither Skipper nor the manatees could manage to get the head out of the mud on the harbor floor. 

So they took her back to the zoo without her head at all and set her up in the penguin habitat. 

Just in time too.

Imelda and the other lady penguins were brought out and released into the water. Skipper grabbed her flipper and kissed it. Immediately Hans flew over and landed on the Mermaid where her head should have been. This drew the attention of the zookeeper and when he realized what he was looking at, he screamed and called the Police. 

The news was filled with stories and speculation about the Mermaid and who would have put her in the Penguin habitat. Many thought it was the radical polar conservation group Free All Penguins, whose logo was a penguin behind bars with a red x over it. FAP didn’t mind taking credit either and as a result, their logo was splattered all over the front page of every newspaper and news show in Denmark. As well as a photo of the headless statue with several penguins standing around gawking. Skipper was one of the gawkers.

Meanwhile, Imelda had shown no interest at all in Skipper, inexplicably preferring Hans as her companion. The zookeepers were not much happier than Skipper was about it. They wanted to breed Imelda in captivity but that was not going to happen with Hans about so they transferred Hans to the Hoboken Zoo to get rid of him and Skipper to the Central Park Zoo in exchange for a new male penguin who might suit the finicky penguin princess better. 

Skipper, being the intellectual giant he was, saw the newspaper and found out that both he and Hans were bring transferred. He added 2 and 2 and got 13 as usual – He was wanted by every law enforcement agency in Denmark and thus was Public Enemy Number One. Why else would they put his picture and a drawing of him on the front page of the paper. (He’d not yet met Phil and Mason, who could have read the news and told him the whole sordid mess.) The zookeepers had caught Hans spying and they decided to send him off to another prison. 

So he went, always fearing being sent back to stand trial or worse in Denmark but every now and again he thought of Imelda, the penguin princess and smiled. Just kissing that princess one time before he was deported was worth it all! Who cared about Denmark anyway? 

~ End ~


End file.
